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Professional learning of general science teachers: Epistemic discourse and understanding of scientific epistemology
Citation
Tan, A. L., Tan, S. C., & Talaue, F. (2024). Professional learning of general science teachers: Epistemic discourse and understanding of scientific epistemology (Report No. OER 05/14 TAL). National Institute of Education (Singapore), Office of Education Research. https://hdl.handle.net/10497/27400
Abstract
This study examines the epistemic discourse and the understanding of epistemology of teachers teaching general science at the lower secondary level. The secondary science curriculum in Singapore is designed in a spiral manner and is written as outcomes statements. These outcomes focuses on the content of science that students are expected to learn at the end of each school year. In secondary schools, science teachers are trained as specialists in various sub-disciplines of science such as biology, chemistry, and physics. These specialist science teachers can potentially be deployed to teach lower secondary science that is designed as general science with all the three sub-disciplines coming together to form one subject. As such, biology-trained teachers will have to teach chemistry and physics, while physics-trained teachers will also have to teach biology and chemistry. Anecdotally, this has resulted in some levels of discomfort as teachers are uncertain of scientific content that they are not trained in. These practical difficulties experienced by teachers teaching general science seemed to concur with the theoretical idea that while all the three sub-disciplines of science falls under the large umbrella of science, there are subtle but important differences among them. Based on Biglan’s (1973) ideas of disciplinarity, while academic subjects are classified into categories of similar ways of thinking, there remained degrees of differences between these categories. This is because the sub-disciplines of sciences, from biology (soft) to physics (hard), give different emphasis to what constitute evidence and placed different prominence on the use of specialized vocabularies. The differences between knowledge structure in biology, chemistry and physics can also be viewed from a sociological perspective. In Bernstein’s (1999) ideas of horizontal and vertical discourses, biology show more features of a discipline that has more traits of everyday local knowledge with more diffused vocabularies while physics is characterized by specialised knowledge and vocabularies.
Date Issued
2024
Publisher
Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore
Series
OER Final Report
Description
Note: Restricted to NIE staff.
Project
OER 05/14 TAL
Grant ID
Education Research Funding Programme (ERFP)
Funding Agency
Ministry of Education, Singapore